Bhaskar Dasgupta November 29, 2006

Tags: US , Iraq , war , peace

Why the western alliance is thrashing around in Iraq and what went wrong?

href="/tag/Afghanistan">Afghanistan war. The authorities are running around like headless chickens trying to understand or decide what to do. Actually, this is not restricted to just the COW nations (USA, UK, Poland, Australia, etc.) but can be sensed across a wide swathe of countries. Almost every country worth of note is experiencing a big element of doubt. If it is not “how the heck do we get out of this mess?” then it’s “crikey, if they pull out, what’s going to happen to us”. The countries in the later category belong to that august grouping of Germany, France, India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. In the immortal words of Mr. Bernard Lewis, the doyen of historians (and with due apologies to him), they all agree on “what went wrong?“

In 2002, Bernard Lewis wrote a book titled “What went wrong?”. (ISBN: 075381675X) While the book was actually written before 9/11, it hit the stands in 2002, and it immediately went into the bestseller charts. People snaffled it up in great angst, trying to understand why a bunch of young Muslim men would hijack airliners and use them to go about killing thousands of innocent civilians. Authoritative figures such as Mr. Lewis were able to provide an almost Huntingtonian (clash of civilisations fame) explanation: ‘the fault is to do with Islam.’ Based upon a rather narrow reading of Islamic history, the book, “What went wrong?” purported to tell all about why the problem happened. It professed to reveal the history of this religion, the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, how these Muslim men were misguided by their social, cultural and religious upbringing and environments and ended up giving the basic manifesto to resolve this problem. Ergo, go take out the Islamic / Muslim regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, replace their annoying governments with nice liberal democratic regimes, have a nice moral glow about it all, and then sit back and bask in the same form of self-righteous glow that USA had after WW2.

So far so good, but unfortunately, that did not happen. Five years after 9/11, and there is a sense of bewilderment. It is almost as if they found a chip pan fire and in a great awesome spirit of wanting to contain the fire, asked the experts. The experts suggested throwing water over it. Therefore, they did, and whoosh, the fire blazed even higher. Now they are frantically looking around for help.

I have to admit, back in those shocked days, when the USA went hunting for the bad boys in Afghanistan, the entire western world was feeling with and cheering for them. Then the rot started to surface. The Americans went into Iraq in search for some mythical WMDs. Not only didn’t they find the WMDs, but also they managed to exhibit breathtaking incompetence in both Afghanistan and Iraq, prompting comparisons with Vietnam (http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2004/09/vietnam-groundhog-day. html).

What is the status now? It is a quagmire in Iraq. It is chewing up American and British troops and spitting out their flag draped coffins. It is generating Jihadi’s by the hundreds. Iraq and Afghanistan as functioning countries no longer exist. They have or are, very near Somalia status of failed states. All this is happening, while America and the UK were supposed to be the midwives of this new Middle East, home to the new Muslim Liberal Democratic states. There are hundreds of sectarian kidnappings and killings every day in Iraq. The country is being pulled into various directions and is a magnet for every disaffected Jihadi in the world. The coalition is flailing around, trying to understand what to do. The democratic elected government is locked inside high walls in Baghdad’s Green Zone, and that is about as far as its writ flies. The ministries of the government are divided between the Shia and Sunni parties, stuffed full of their respective militias and they are busy killing each other. When they get bored, they go about blowing up the British and American soldiers. The Iraqi army, policy and judiciary are nowhere near taking on the responsibility of running a state of their own, and still rely heavily on the coalition to prop them up. Unfortunately, the price that the coalition is paying is excessively high and their countries (UK and USA) are demanding that their boys come back. Between the incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Tony Blair, their self-righteousness and their stupidity, they have created a self-sustaining nightmare. Now they have no idea what to do.

In Afghanistan, the situation is as dire. There are too few troops on the ground. Because of the bizarre support of the Pakistani state by the Americans, the Taliban are now regrouping and getting support from Pakistan. The drug crop is ever increasing, there is no government outside the equivalent green zone in Kabul, and ‘warlordism’ is rife. If the objective was to implement a modern liberal democratic government, then that hope has failed miserably. Actually, what has happened is that they have managed to fail in every possible objective and created more problems than they have solved. Karzai’s government is very dependent upon NATO support and NATO is not doing much, because NATO governments are hesitant to put in the required amount of troops on the ground and USA refuses to kick Pakistan’s backside to demand it ceases supporting the Taliban.

So what now? Withdraw the troops? That is what the British and American populace want. Right now, immediately, withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, while they are at it, stop supporting Israel. Moreover, the authorities know that while their population wants the troops back home immediately, if they do this, both countries are going to collapse not just immediately, but even before they are gone. In addition, these are not tiny inconsequential countries such as Somalia, these are big countries with big committed Jihadi populations, which can reach out and touch someone. Actually, Somalia is not really that inconsequential, as the recent UN report pointed out. Hundreds of Somalian Islamist warriors have been reported to be in Lebanon, fighting with Hizbollah against Israel in the recent Israel-Lebanese War. Multiply this with multiple factors and you can see what the world will be faced with, if the American/British support is withdrawn.

This is causing other countries to worry deeply as well. Germany was very strongly against the Iraq War and a few months ago; found itself miraculously escaping a twin train bombing, which if it had happened, would have been at the same level as that of the Madrid Bombing. France is already facing a huge ground swell of rebellion mixed with other factors. India is worried about what will happen in Kashmir and so is China in its Xingjian province. The Central Asian Republics are thoroughly worried about the potential collapse of Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia wants to raise a fence all along the Iraq-Saudi border, while Pakistan wants to lay down a deep minefield along the Durand Line. Iran is obviously happy, because this is causing the great and small Satan to stop worrying that much about its nuclear programme. Russia is upset and is trying to walk a fine line between supporting Iran and others, while at the same time trying to keep its Chechnya and Dagestan problem under wraps. Therefore, the coalition and frankly the world don’t know what to do.

The other problem, emerging out of all this tension. is a strong and steady rise in anti-Muslim feelings across the world (I think only Latin America is excluded from this problem, but countries ranging from Thailand, Australia, Austria, UK, USA, Canada, you name it experience it). Small things as yet, but they are mounting up and one can definitely see the parallels between the current Islamophobia and what the Jews faced before WW2. Ironically, the anti-Semitism itself in Europe is rising, driven by the Muslims and to a lesser extent by the white Christian far right. Over the other side of the pond, the evangelist Christian movement wants to support Israel. My word, all this is very confusing indeed.

So that relates to what went wrong, but why it went wrong depends upon whom you ask. It could be the spectacular incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld, or the clash of civilisation. It could be the inability of Islam to change, or the frustration of people who are cut off from their moorings, globalisation, global warming, the price of pork in China. I guess, we have to wait for another “why did it go wrong?” book.

While we can clearly identify what went wrong, we can also identify what will happen in the immediate future. More of the same! Simply because there are not any easy solutions, I am afraid. However, here is where I put on my thinking cap and leap ahead a few years. While USA and UK will be forced to withdraw its troops, Iraq and Afghanistan will manage to stagger on, the incidence of Jihadi’s will definitely increase, and we will see further polarisation between Islam and other cultures and religions. Expect to see much more of Islamophobia. Expect to see many more terrorist attacks. Doomsday events are becoming more probable, I am afraid. Religious places might be attacked and nothing will be left sacred. Expect the normal state order to break down where an Iran can thumb its nose at USA and walk away, where mighty Israel is brought down or fought to a standstill by Lilliputian Hamas. A situation where all the fire and brimstone of all the Jehadis does not really change the situation with the tenth edition of the Arab Human Development Report in 2020 still showing the same gloomy status as that of 2002. Doom and gloom? Yes, I am afraid so.

So how do we break the cycle? I can only think of one solution. It will need an extraordinary US Presidential election in 2008. Only if an extraordinary president takes the wheel, frankly admits previous mistakes and apologises for his moronic predecessor’s administration and decisions; UK follows suit with an extraordinary support by David Cameron, and there is a global effort. Hilary Clinton it is not, and this is why I would say that if you wanted to have somebody to cut this Gordian knot, then you better put your best hope on Barack Obama or John McCain (with my personal bias towards John McCain) to become the next US president and make a clean break from the previous incompetent, miserable, bloody history of the world over the past five years. I hate putting my hope in individuals, much preferring institutional change management. Look what happened with the Muslim world when solely relying on individuals. But in this case, on the western side, the institutions have become stultified. In my opinion, only these two chaps seem to have the moral fibre to take the world by the scruff of its neck, shake it vigorously, tell it to behave itself and then set it down.